Thursday, 3 November 2016

Wallonia's principled opposition to CETA has been misrepresented by both the Canadian government and much of the corporate media in Canada. The wounded elephant in the CETA room that none of them want to talk about is democratic governance.

That stands in stark contrast to what's been happening in Belgium. Here's the message we think the Walloons wanted us to hear.

Wednesday, 28 September 2016

Today three civil society groups, Citizens against CETA, the Council of Canadians and the Social Justice Cooperative made presentations opposing the TPP to the International Trade Committee. Did we have any effect?

A first impression is that we did not. In fact one of the independent observers felt compelled at the end of the presentations to point out how obvious the bias of most MPs appeared.

In fairness, it is probable that most of our arguments had been heard before. On the other hand, with the exception of the NDP's Ms. Ramsey, the focus was clearly on the economic benefits as opposed to the democratic and constitutional constraints of trade agreements like the TPP.

Thus, we presented from the perspective of democratic values, but we ended up answering questions from an economic perspective.

Thank
you for giving me the opportunity to present. Citizens against CETA is a rather grandiose sounding name for a local
group of concerned citizens.We
submitted a brief last June filled with statistics refuting the supposed
benefits of the TPP. But today I would like to talk about values.

In
his meticulously researched book on wealth and income, Capitalism in the 21st Century, French economist, Thomas Piketty, concluded
that we were heading into a period of inequality such that the world has never
seen. If we are to change that, he said, "we have to bet everything on
democracy."

I
believe that inequality continues to grow precisely because, around the globe, democracy
is under attack. The aggressors aren’t terrorists or rogue nations. The aggressors
are international corporations backed by financial elites. The weapon used is a contract.

The
TPP and CETA are gigantic contracts that define, not what corporations can and
can’t do in our country. Instead, these
contracts define what government itself can and can’t do. Any
government action, present and future, that is not clearly defined or not
written into the contract can be challenged by corporations in those infamous
investor-state tribunals where the
public good and environmental protection count for nothing. There, all that matters is entitlement under the
contract.

According
to Osgood Hall investment treaty expert, Gus Van Harten, these contractual agreements
have succeeded in doing what no parliament has been previously able to do under
our English common law system, and that is fetter or straitjacket future parliaments

I
believe that government is asleep at the wheel when it comes to acknowledging
the threat trade agreements pose for our democratic rights. But then, so too are the passengers in the
back seat, the Canadian public. The reason
in both cases is that we live in an age where economic values trump everything.

I’m
a retired social studies teacher. Around
the turn of the century every single course
that allowed a discussion of democracy and politics was deleted from the high school curriculum in my province and replaced with economic
education courses. There was a
consequence. In the 2011 federal election the last election for which we have a
breakdown by age, only 29% of young people under 25 bothered to vote.

I’m
going to suggest that the same neglect of our democratic values has happened in
government. Economic values now dominate,
more precisely the economic values of neoliberalism with its emphasis on free
trade.

This Committee now has all sorts of hard evidence disputing the
Liberal Party`s claims about the benefits of free trade. But two important reports came out last week that I want
to highlight.

The first was a Tufts University study on CETA. “CETA", and this is a quote, "will cause
unemployment, inequality, welfare losses and a reduction of intra-EU
trade.”

That certainly suggests that
CETA is not the “Gold Standard of Trade Agreements” that Prime Minister Trudeau and Minister
Freeland maintain that it is. Will the
prime minister and his trade minister now reverse direction and call for a halt
to the provisional acceptance of CETA?
It all depends on what their true values are, doesn’t it?

The
new OECD report is even more interesting, in spite of its blinkered call for
more trade liberalization. Trade as a driver of GDP has fallen steadily
since 2009. In fact, trade growth is now lagging growth in the broader world economy this year
and that lag is likely to persist Emerging
countries in particular are pulling back
from a dependency on exports and choosing, instead, to develop internal markets as
a means of increasing GDP.

As for OECD countries, governments are increasingly being forced by their citizens
to question the benefits of a free trade model that has heightened
inequality,caused job losses, and straitjacketed government`s ability to deal with either.

Consider
the way that the TPP unexpectedly became a major campaign issue in the US elections.
Consider Brexit - or last week when 320,000 Germans in multiple cities
demonstrated in the streets against the TTIP and CETA.

These
aren’t going to be isolated incidences. According to the recent OECD report, election
results and polls in OECD countries are
pointing to a shift away from the traditional left–right divide among voters
towards anti-and pro-globalization electorates. That`s a very significant
development to consider.

As members of the trade committee, you hold an enormous responsibility. I`m sure you’ve been watching closely how public
opinion is coalescing against these trade agreements elsewhere. But
you are also affected by the unwavering, ideological enthusiasm those who control policy in our two major parties
still have for free trade.

How
do you choose between ideological faith in free trade on the one side and substantial
evidence on the other side that our
trade policy will hurt Canadian value added industries, increase inequality and
fetter democratic governance?

Surely
it`s with values. What do you value
most? Do you believe that you have a
responsibility to your children and grandchildren and community to preserve democracy
and fight initiatives that promote inequality. Because I ‘m hoping if you do, you will say a resounding and public NO to trade agreements
like the TPP.

Tuesday, 27 September 2016

Tomorrow the International Trade Committee will be in St. John's to hear submissions on the TPP. The location is the Sheraton Hotel, Salon B. There will be an opportunity for the public to speak between 11.30 and 12:30. Come along and help us alert government about the perils of the TPP, CETA and other trade agreements.

Thursday, 22 September 2016

What trade agreements like the TPP mean to us.

I
would like to first thank the Committee for giving us the opportunity to submit
our opinion.

We
have read the TPP briefs submitted to the International Trade Committee over
the last few months and are confident that both the purported pros and cons of
the TPP have been comprehensively addressed. What is interesting from our
perspective is where the support for the TPP lies and where it does not.

Not
surprisingly, the pro TPP submissions came from Big Business. The majority, we
noticed, were written in support of the export of agricultural commodities.
There were almost no pro TPP submissions from Canada’s value added industries
with production in Canada. That is very telling, is it not?

It is
in the anti TPP camp that you will find the family farmers, the unions, civil
society groups and, above all, ordinary citizens. Their priorities are very
different.

Overwhelmingly,
these submissions assert that trade agreements like the TPP constrain
government’s ability to protect the quality of life of Canadians. Whether it is
issues around affordable health care, the outsourcing of jobs, environmental
protection, government procurement and so much more, the point is being
repeatedly made that the TPP and its predecessor, CETA, are a corporate assault
on Canada’s legislative and judicial sovereignty.

The
big question is: Which perspective is government going to favour? Will
government come down on the side of keeping our democratic institutions strong?
Or will you choose the side of Big Business?

We cite two reasons for our inclination to think the voice of
ordinary Canadians will not win out.

Instead,
Canada, along with the unelected European Commission, has pushed for the preliminary
or provisional ratification of CETA as quickly as possible. To use a business
analogy, imagine a corporation has negotiated a 20 year contract at a fixed
price. Then, unexpectedly at the 11th hour they discover that the
other party can only deliver two thirds of the promised market access. Would
the company respond by rushing through the deal?

No
way, yet that’s exactly what has happened. We think it unequivocally suggests
that government is not logical in its ideological enthusiasm for free trade.

“Excessive power in the hands of the few”2.
In an interview before her 2014 Mallory Lecture at McGill University,
Elizabeth May made two very strong statements to clarify her claim. She
referred to “the excessive control by the unelected
top party brass in all three main parties” . It’s flip side, she pointed
out, was that “MPs are expected to toe the party line on every issue, big and
small.”

By
extension we can’t help wondering whether the International Trade Committee,
(and this is not a critique of the hard work and integrity of individual
members) will ultimately be required to toe the line. International
trade was the top lobbying topic for Canada in 2015.3 Clearly, powerful business interests want
this deal to go through.

Indeed, it has occurred to us and others that the Trade
Committee might be merely a side show, conveniently filling time while the top
party brass waits to see what happens with the TPP in the U.S. After all, it
would be embarrassing if we rushed the TPP through and then found that the American
people succeeded in having it rejected, in spite of President Obama’s
enthusiasm for the deal.

For
the last 15 years the international business community and their advocates
within government have pushed Canada into signing multipletrade
agreements. The results have been, to put it mildly, disappointing. Exports to countries with
which Canada does not presently have a free trade agreement (FTA) grew six times as fast4 as to those with whom we
do have an FTA during that period.4 Meanwhile, imports from our
trade agreement partners grew twice as fast as our exports to them. And
Canada’s export performance has been the2nd worst5of any OECD country.

As if that is not bad enough, respected simulation studies
predict that the TPP will

It seems irrational to us that any democratically elected
government, aware of all of the above, might want to ratify a deal as huge as
the TPP.

Unfortunately, we Newfoundlanders and Labradorians have learned
the hard way how easy it is for bad deals to irrationally proceed. Our province
has a hydro-electric project in Labrador that is massively over budget, is
economically unfeasible, will extravagantly raise NL electricity rates, and
could come close to bankrupting the province. It was imposed on us by a
provincial government that chose to refuse any meaningful consultation process
with the public but listened intensely to the advice of powerful business
interests.

There is another potential problem. In spite of the fact that
most Newfoundlanders and Labradorians want to shut down and cut our losses in
this massive boondoggle of a project, that could be difficult to do. That’s
because our contractual obligations with big international corporations could conceivably
leave us open to huge NAFTA, and future CETA or TPP ISDS lawsuits challenges.

We raise this point because past and present Canadian governments
have tended to portray ISDS lawsuits as a necessary and acceptable risk of
engaging in trade agreements. This view continues in spite of mounting
international evidence of the extensive economic and political damage these
ISDS lawsuits have caused in other countries. Presumably, it’s more
ideologically convenient to believe all those corporate lobbyists who assert
that the trend towards multi-billion dollar lawsuits is not something that
could happen in this country.

Civil society groups understand very clearly that ISDS lawsuits --
and there will be lots under the TPP -- are an unnecessary corporate assault on
the democratic right to govern. Government is in denial on that point.

We would also suggest that, at this point in time, civil society
groups apparently understand what’s better for the Canadian economy than the
international business interests that push so hard for the ratification of
these trade deals. Government again appears to be in denial of the evidence
that supports this assessment.

In conclusion, we believe the International Trade Committee has an
enormous responsibility to do what’s right for the citizens that elected you to
office. That would be, in our opinion, a recommendation against the TPP.

Tuesday, 2 August 2016

There has been a lot of media coverage on the displays of xenophobia surrounding the Brexit vote in the U.K. and Donald Trump's presidential campaign. These are deplorable actions and should be condemned.

An unfortunate consequence, however, of both the focus on Trump's more outrageous statements and the isolated acts of racism in the U.K. has been to divert attention away from what discouraged Brits and Americans are saying about our globalist experiment of the last 30 years.

First
let me thank the Committee for the opportunity to submit this brief.

There
are four concerns we would like to express. They relate to the impact of trade
agreements like the TPP on our parliamentary democracy, our judicial
sovereignty and the Canadian economy. Finally, we would like to address the inherent
imbalance of the lobbying process.

1. The impact of the TPP and other trade
agreements on democratic governance.

It
seems to us that there is an invisible elephant on the table in discussions
about the merits of trade agreements that the Prime Minister, elected MPs and
civil servants, particularly in the Department of International Trade, rarely
acknowledge. That elephant is democratic
governance.

Trade agreements like the TPP and CETA are a clever back door way of
getting around one of our most important democratic principles. It’s called the No-Fettering Rule.

“In Canadian law (based on the English common law) there is a
democratic principle called the no-fettering rule that bars one elected
government from making commitments to bind another.

However, the principle does
not exist in international law and an international agreement cannot be
trumped by the laws of Canada.”

from Sold Down the Yangtze by Gus Van Harten, Osgood Hall Law
School 1

Thus, a government, driven by ideology or corporate interests, can surreptitiously
use a trade agreement (which falls under international law) to fetter future
governments for decades. That can happen through targeting highly specific
policies for elimination (such as Minimum Processing Requirements in our
province of Newfoundland or Labrador). But the fettering language can be more
general, and therefore open to interpretations that government never intended. We’ve chosen to focus on just three of the
many ways in which this type of fettering can take place.

Regulatory Fettering: Under
trade agreements like NAFTA, the TPP and CETA, corporations are able to legally
challenge the right of future governments to create and amend regulations. They
can do this by claiming their “legitimate expectations
under the Fair and Equitable Treatment”2 clauses
have been violated.

The
most frequent targets of these legal challenges have been, and probably will
continue to be, government attempts to protect the environment and manage our
resources. However, the TPP is notable in that it goes beyond NAFTA in also making
it harder to regulate the
financial sector.3 The reasons for the 2008
financial collapse have apparently been forgotten.

The
most troubling aspect of regulatory fettering is invisible. For example, there
is evidence that the mere corporate threat of an ISDS NAFTA lawsuit has caused
government to modify or reconsider planned and needed new regulations.4

Fettering Public Services:Both the TPP (at the federal level) and CETA (in sub-federal
jurisdictions as well) use a “negative list”5 approach to protect public
services. That means that any attempt by future governments to introduce a public service that has not been already protected on the “negative lists” can be legally challenged
by TPP orCETA investors. Furthermore, under the Ratchet6 mechanism, if government decides to privatize a
public service, that privatization becomes locked in. The service cannot be
brought back into the public sector

What about Pharmacare? Under both CETA7 and the TPP8 it will be very difficult for future
governments to introduce a national “Pharmacare” program that will not have
costly restrictions placed on it by the big pharmaceutical corporations.

Fettering Government
Procurement: 50 municipalities9, including the largest in the country,
petitioned their provincial governments asking that public spending at the
municipal level be excluded from CETA. Their argument was that the right of
governments to use “Buy Local policies” to stimulate local economies should not
be tampered with.

Government’s response was, in essence, to side step the core issue of the
fettering of government authority by simply raising the threshold beyond which
CETA’s procurement restrictions would kick in. We find it significant that, by
contrast, TPP countries, chose to protect ``Buy Local``10 policies in sub-federal
jurisdictions.

2. The impact of the TPP and other trade
agreements on Canada’s judicial sovereignty

What happens if a future government rebels and chooses not to be fettered
by the TPP or CETA? Under the Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) regime
they can be sued by investing corporations in offshore tribunals. These
tribunals can demand that governments
pay huge (multi-billion dollar) compensation to corporations.

These ISDS tribunals can also override Canadian courts and profoundly fetter
future government actions.

A salient example is the Exxon Mobil Murphy
Oil lawsuit.12Three levels
of Canadian courts rejected arguments made by US oil companies that a tribunal
in Newfoundland and Labrador could not lawfully tighten requirements related to
oil company research and development in the province. When the oil companies
took the lawsuit to the NAFTA ISDS tribunal the tribunal chose to ignore the interpretation of the Canadian courts. Not
only did the government have to pay generous compensation to the corporations. The
tribunal ruled that Canada would continue to be liable as long as the
restrictive regulations stayed in place.

Also, of notable significance is the
current Eli Lilly NAFTA
lawsuit13 against Canada. Eli Lilly is
challenging decisions by Canada’s federal courts to invalidate the company’s
patents for two drugs. Canadian courts had decided that Eli Lilly had presented
insufficient evidence to show the drugs would deliver the promised long-term
benefits. According to Ottawa University
law professor,
Michael
Geist, “If
the pharmaceutical giant succeeds, it will have effectively found a mechanism
to override the Supreme Court of Canada.”14

Canada has been sued 39 times under NAFTA. That’s more than any
other developed country in the world. Expect an acceleration of ISDS lawsuits
if the TPP is ratified. It may even be dramatic. That’s because, at present, disputes over procure­ment contracts or public-private
partnerships are typically resolved in Canadian courts. The TPP would allow multinational
corporations who enter into contracts with the federal government (either to
supply goods and services or to deliver or operate privatized services and
infrastructure) to pursue ISDS lawsuits15. This is a very significant extension of the definition of
what kind of investor is entitled to use the ISDS mechanism.

.

The silence of our judiciary on the impact of the TPP and CETA stands in
contrast to what’s been happening elsewhere in the world. Even before this
latest development was revealed, internationally there has been substantial and
growing judicial and legal opposition to the ISDS regime. That includes:

We applaud their stance. Our position is that Canada should be
working to reform the ISDS obligations ceded under NAFTA, rather than signing
trade agreements that will further fetter our court system through enlarged
concessions to huge international corporations.

3.The impact
of the TPP and CETA on the Canadian economy

Did you know that between 2001 and 2015:

·Exports to countries with which Canada does
not presently have a free trade agreement (FTA) grew six
times as fast as to those with whom we do have an FTA? 21

·Canada’s export performance since the turn of
century has been the 2nd worst of any OECD country?22

In spite of these sobering statistics, economists and lobbyists
from the powerful corporate think tanks continue to enthusiastically push for
the ratification of the TPP and CETA. Canada has to participate, we’re told, because
so many other countries do. Our poor performance to date is rationalized by the
claim that there is always a lag period while countries adjust to a different
economic reality. If we are just patient, we are told, the benefits will
eventually flow to Canadian businesses and Canadian workers.

As for the claim that the benefits of free trade will come if we
are patient, some well-respected research, as well as dissent from Canadian
entrepreneurs, suggest exactly the opposite.

Jobs: According
to a study out of Tufts
University 24 which used the UN Global
Policy Model, the TPP is going to increase
inequality and cause job
losses in all 12 participating
countries. The model predicts highest per capita job losses in Canada.25 CETA will
also provoke job losses, particularly in manufacturing and processing sectors, according
to a 2010 CCPA report.26

Canadian Businesses: A United Nations UNCTAD study27 (Table 2, pg. 24) predicts
a 26% drop in Canada’s value-added exports as a consequence of the TPP.
Particularly hard hit will be innovative industries.

“Once ratified, the (TPP) agreement will
make our markets less free and less competitive, and it will particularly
hurt innovation-based entrepreneurship.”

Dan Breznitz, Monk Chair of
Innovative Studies, University of Toronto.28

Canadian business leaders who have spoken out against different
aspects of the TPP include:

As for the CETA agreement, the obligatory opening up of provincial
and municipal procurement to corporations based in Europe is a one way
concession. Canadian companies will find it very hard to penetrate the European
market given both the linguistic and diverse regulatory challenges in place
there.

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI): It seems to us that the big question with
respect to FDI in Canada is not how much money will come into the country, but
rather what it will be used for.

Measurement of FDI in Canada in the 16 years after the CUFTA and NAFTA
were signed (1985-2001) showed that 96.6% of investments34 were used for the acquisition of existing
businesses. Less than 3% was used for the introduction of new industries.

Does government really believe that FDI under the TPP and CETA is going
to be used to start up new industries that will benefit our economy? Isn’t it
much more likely that the objective of international corporations is greater
access (either through P3s or increased privatization) to that enormous cash
cow, the delivery of public services? How does guaranteeing them that access through
trade agreements benefit the Canadian economy?

4. Lobbying: Which voices most influence
government?

According to Statistics Canada, international
trade was the top lobbying topic35for
Canada in 2015. While we were unable to find out just how much money is spent
on lobbying governments in Canada, we are pretty sure that a minuscule fraction
of the total amount spent comes from civil society groups.

Government will, no doubt, argue that civil
society is already represented by the MPs we elect. However, it`s a very
selective representation. MPs do an excellent job at responding to constituency
issues but trade is not considered a constituency issue. How many MPs outside
of the trade committee have been briefed in a comprehensive and unbiased manner
on both the pros and cons of these trade agreements? How many have been
encouraged to bring trade issues back to their constituents for discussion?

As for the promised public consultations on
the TPP, they were, in our opinion, initially structured to avoid having to
talk with the public. For a long time there was no schedule posted on the
government website as to where and when public consultations would take place
with the result that interested civil society groups either missed the
“presentations” or were given less than 24 hours’ notice.36
That’s since been corrected but only after civil society groups went public
with their disappointment.

With respect to CETA, we would like to remind the Committee that civil
society groups had minimal access to government during the excessively
secretive CETA negotiations. This stood in stark contrast to the access corporate lobbyists37 were granted to negotiators. Thus,
while presentations were accepted by the International Trade Committee early on
in the negotiation process, civil society groups, unlike the corporate sector, were
at the considerable disadvantage of having to rely on leaked and outdated
material to make their case.

Civil society groups hoped and expected that that bias would be corrected
with the election of a new government committed to more openness and reform.
The decision not to hold public consultations or revisit CETA through the
Parliamentary Committee profoundly surprised us. It`s hard not to conclude that government
wants the general public to know as little about this trade agreement as
possible.

Could it be that the political enthusiasm of our mainstream
parties for free trade is based more on ideology than evidence? Studies analyzing or estimating past and
future performance suggest that the TPP will not open markets for our value
added industries. Nor will it grow
genuine Canadian businesses. And it will not create good paying jobs.

As for the CETA agreement, restrictions on the procurement of
goods and services at the sub-federal level represent an enormous concession to
the giant corporations that have lobbied so heavily for this agreement. CETA also includes a “zombie clause” that will
allow these corporations to continue suing government for up to 20 years even
if a future government chooses to withdraw from the agreement.

We would
like to end with three questions for the committee.

1.What possible justification could the
Canadian government have for ratifying two trade agreements that will so
significantly fetter the legislative and adjudicate power and authority of
future governments?

2.Where is the positive economic evidence
justifying the ratification of either the TPP or CETA?

3.Is it not time to reassess Canada’s free
trade policy?

Our
group is aware of all the time and effort Committee members must put into
reading briefs like our own. This is a huge responsibility.

We
hope that, in diligently examining all the evidence, you will come to the
conclusion, as we have, that the ratification of these trade agreements is not
in Canada’s best interest.